AT&T Launches Internet Radio, Download Platform for Subscribers

AT&T has launched a new mobile music platform that delivers “song and album downloads, streaming radio, song match, lyric search and an enhanced music player – into a single, cohesive experience for AT&T mobile phones.” AT&T will charge customers $6.99 a month on top of a data plan fee, with song and album purchases charged a la carte.

The service will extend streaming music capabilities to “quick messaging phones”, also sometimes called feature phones, or non-smartphones. It’s currently available on three popular devices – LG Xenon, Samsung Solstice and Samsung Impression. It will soon be available for downloads on other phones and AT&T will begin pre-loading it on new devices this summer.

AT&T has clearly identified streaming music as a popular application for mobile devices, and created this platform to offer customers who are not using smartphones those capabilities. I’m sure they’re hoping those customers will see a good reason to purchase unlimited data plans so they can stream.

Meanwhile, Nielsen recently reported that smartphones will overtake other mobile devices by the end of next year as more and more customers choose to upgrade. The use of Wi-Fi increases from 5% for feature phone owners to 50% for smartphone users because smartphones give users more ways to utilize a broadband connection. Now AT&T has created a platform that enables feature phone customers with some of those capabilities.

Meanwhile, it’s all a good thing for the growing Internet radio audience…